China

The state government is welcoming foreign investors wishing to commercialise padi planting in Sabah in order to increase rice production in the state, Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Yahya Hussin said.

Rich food importers are acquiring vast tracts of poor countries' farmland. Is this beneficial foreign investment or neocolonialism?

China’s Deputy Agricultural Minister, Niu Dun, has announced that China will not look towards the African continent to outsource food production by investing in overseas farmland.

Women in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have turned back officials trying to implement a forced farming program on their land, but remain concerned about their property rights, according to farmers there.

Pakistan's Ministry of Investment has decided to offer one million acres of farmland for long-term investment or sale to foreigners, including the Emirates Investment Group.

Rattled by last year's food price crisis, governments and corporations have signed a slew of deals to lease or buy arable land in cash-strapped nations, mainly in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Some Gulf countries may now be realising the importance of offering direct loans to African countries as a means to increase Arab investment.

Food-importing nations from South Korea to Saudi Arabia may step up purchases or leases of overseas farmland to lock in supplies amid concern prices may again surge. “We’re going to see more of this, especially from countries that are quite dependent on imports,” Brady Sidwell, head of advisory at Rabobank Groep NV’s Northeast Asia Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory Group, said in a Bloomberg Television interview broadcast today.

The issue of land ownership in Africa is very sacred and foreign investors need to be aware of the local sensitivities.

The problem of food security poses a real threat to global stability. Meeting in Italy last weekend, agriculture ministers of the G8 industrialized countries recognized the extent of the problem. They pledged to continue fighting hunger. But beyond calling for increased public and private investment in agriculture, the final communiqué of the ministerial meeting was short on fresh proposals.

China has said it will not join the growing trend of outsourcing food production by investing in overseas farmland, particularly in Africa, expressing doubts that such deals could improve its food security.

Officiellement, les terres arables louées à la Chine n’existent pas. C’est que les autorités kazakhes craignent la réaction de la population rurale devant la “concurrence déloyale” représentée par l’arrivée en masse de paysans chinois, dont l’équipement agricole est supérieur au vieux matériel soviétique encore utilisé sur la plupart des exploitations kazakhes.